In a former life, I happened to be at the table soon after Ofsted took over the inspection of children's social care. Among other things, this translated into the design of the Joint Area Review inspection. Ofsted's leads saw this as the great opportunity it was – to design an inspection regime which would help ensure the safety of our children. We all agreed with that, so what went wrong? The first, and fundamental flaw was the idea that we can generate guarantees in an uncertain world. We simply cannot. Yes, of course, we can reduce risks and maximise prevention. But under the Pareto principle, we also know that the cost of every percentage reduction in risk rises exponentially. Lord Laming may have asked ‘What price a child's life?', daring someone to answer, but for the reality of public policy, this is not a rhetorical question – there are real limits on what we are prepared or able to spend, both as councils and across the regulatory regimes. So, the fact is, we could never have entirely eliminated the risk of further child deaths. But, crucially, even if we could have, there remained further flaws in both the design of the inspection methodology, and its execution. For those of us who have experienced a JAR inspection, implicit in the Ofsted approach is the view that if you have enough people on site, for long enough, looking at everything, you will reach the ‘right' answer. But the size of the team is not an indicator of the quality of the final inspection – it is merely a reflection of the success of Ofsted in generating ministerial support. If you are not looking at the right things, in the right way, with the right people, who have had the right training and support, the inspection outcome will not be worth these inputs. That's not in any way to blame Ofsted for what happened with Baby P – responsibility, rightly, lies with the council – and other public sector agencies, such as schools and health – for their policies, processes and practices. But, if any inspection regime is to come to the right judgment, drive improvement and add value, size and scale are not the answers. An army of inspectors, shadowing the work of frontline staff would still not be enough to generate the certainty that the public seem to want. And ministers do everyone an injustice if they continue to feed the belief that it will.
